Best Ways To Expand Your Business’s Online Presence

Now more than ever before, the marketplace is truly globalized. Thanks to the advent of Web 2.0, geographic limitations no longer constrain the savvy entrepreneur. Indeed, the internet may well be the great equalizer, democratizing enterprises and putting success literally at the business owner’s fingertips.

 

However, any tool is only as effective as its user. That means that you’re not going to reap the full benefit of the world wide web unless you are proactive in your efforts to expand and optimize your online presence. This article describes key strategies for unleashing the power of the internet for your business.

Get In the Know With SEO

Let’s face it: the world wide web is an enormous “place” and it’s getting larger every second. That means that you’re going to need to put in a little extra effort if you want your target audience to find you amid a seemingly infinite ocean of potential competitors.

 

By far one of the most effective strategies for doing this is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO encompasses a wide array of specialized techniques designed to ensure that specific domains, sites, and pages rank highly on search engines’ results lists. Ideally, SEO techniques will enable a company’s content to appear within the first few pages of a Google search, for example.

 

Not surprisingly, SEO-oriented content is likely to be one of your most effective tools for building brand awareness and driving new customer acquisition. After all, your ideal prospects are unlikely to rifle through more than a page or two of online search results before they select a company to do business with.

Harness the Power of Social Media

If you’re looking to expand your online presence, chances are that a simple company website that is rarely (if ever) updated will do the job. In fact, today’s customers want much more. They’re looking both to learn about and engage with your organization.

 

To give your target customers the kind of interaction they’re likely to expect, you’re going to need a robust social media presence. The key to effective social media marketing, though, is to understand who your audience is, what they want, and how they behave online.

 

For instance, different generations use social media in their own unique ways. Younger audiences, including millennials and Generation Z, tend to prefer more video-focused platforms, such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. This also means, not surprisingly, that they’re looking for multimedia content rather than text or still images. Thus, if you’re targeting a younger demographic, then try to prioritize short video content, from influencer videos to product demos to customer reviews.

Trick Out Your Technology

As previously suggested, if you want your content to stand out online, generating not only clicks but shares, then it’s imperative that you understand not just what your target audience does but also how they feel. When you are dealing with such a large, diverse, and geographically distributed audience as that which can be found on the web, however, developing such actionable insight can feel daunting, if not downright impossible.

 

The good news, though, is that today’s technology is empowering entrepreneurs in ways that were unimaginable just a few short years ago. This is especially apparent when it comes to innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Indeed, AI is increasingly being used in the retail space to help identify and remediate consumers’ pain points.

 

For instance, AI is being used with great success for predictive analytics, pinpointing emerging market trends and nascent internal business opportunities and threats. Armed with such insights, your company can define future-focused products, services, and operating processes. Best of all, when it comes to expanding your business’s online presence, the insights gleaned from AI-driven predictive analytics can be used to develop digital content and online platforms in general that meet every customer need and expectation while eliminating their pain points.

 

An AI-based analysis, for instance, might discover that your online content is generating hits on the landing pages of your platforms, but that site visitors rarely spend more than a few seconds on your product pages. You and your team might then use this data to create a visual map of your site visitors’ experiences with your online content, brainstorming potential challenges they may be encountering with your product pages, and formulating prospective solutions for each challenge.

 

The modifications you make as a result of this data-driven process can result in more visitors to your sites, more time spent on the sites, more shares of your content, and more conversions from prospect to paying customers.

The Takeaway

The ascendancy of the world wide web has truly changed not only the way we live our lives but also the way we do business. To succeed in today’s global marketplace, it is imperative for businesses to have strong digital platforms. This doesn’t just happen, however. Business owners must be proactive and strategic in their measures to establish and expand their company’s online presence.

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